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Is your city the next ‘Cop City?’ How police are transforming neighborhoods and poisoning our planet

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Tuesday, June 4, 2024

As climate catastrophe worsens in the US, a disturbing policy trend ensues: expanding prisons and police projects that directly harm the environment and the very communities they claim to serve.Atlanta serves as a prime example, where plans for the controversial “Cop City” training facility involve destroying a crucial watershed – a pattern shadowing lawmakers from New York City to Texas and across the country.Atlanta’s proposed police training complex, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, means clearing 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest, a vital watershed for primarily Black neighborhoods. The decision, made in the wake of 2020′s Black Lives Matter protests, has left residents further prone to climate catastrophe.“Forests keep us safe because they soak up heavy rainfall, protecting us from floods,” said Mariah Parker, former Athens-Clarke County commissioner. “Cop city isn’t even built but the destruction of the forest and its replacement with impervious concrete is already putting people in danger.”In this aerial view, a structure sits on land owned by the city of Atlanta, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, in unincorporated DeKalb County. The Atlanta City Council has approved plans to lease the land to the Atlanta Police Foundation so it can build a state-of-the-art police and firefighter training center, a project that protesters derisively call “Cop City.” (AP Photo/Danny Karnik)APRecent extreme flooding, which Parker and other organizers link deforestation for Cop City, have cast a grim foreshadow. Like the rest of the country, Atlanta faces increasingly hotter years. The removal of the Weelaunee Forest further jeopardizes the Black residents already abandoned by the green energy movement due to redlining.As the deadly effects of climate change continue to sweep across the United States, millions of tax dollars are being poured into building new prisons and police facilities, leaving constituents, especially those of color, vulnerable to environmental catastrophe.A national trend: Prisons vs. the environmentThe pattern of pro-police agendas supersede environmental health and community safety, advocates say.This year, Texas Prison Community Advocates (TPCA) have filed a formal complaint that amends a 2023 lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The document alleges that temperatures inside cells can have reached as high as 149 degrees Fahrenheit, where prisoners are “cooking to death.” Professor Michele Deitch at the University of Texas Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, warns that such conditions will only worsen with climate change.Alongside noting antiquated piping in prisons, which often lead to water pollution, Deitch noted that several are built on flood plains, those prone to natural disasters.“Many prisons are built near toxic sites,” said Deitch. “It’s not unique to Texas, but they’re built near places where there’s chemical exposures and other kinds of toxins.”Toxic soils threaten New York City’s Chinatown, where the city has approved a 40-story mega jail, part of a borough-based jail to close the notorious Rikers’ Island. Of the five boroughs, Staten Island, majority white and Republican, will not receive a new jail. Soil samples revealed unsafe concentrations of chemicals like benzo anthracene and chrysene, which the CDC said are potentially linked to cancers.Matrix New World Engineering Land Surveying Report, July 2019, on behalf of the New York City Office of Management and Budget and New York City Department of Corrections, page 29New York City Office of Management and Budget[source: Matrix New World Engineering Land Surveying Report, July 2019, on behalf of the New York City Office of Management and Budget and New York City Department of Corrections, page 29]Chinatown advocates like Jan Lee, member of Neighbors United Below Canal, have alleged with documentation that Gramercy Group, the company contracted by the city, failed to adhere to environmental safety procedures and self-report these and worker injuries, as they are compelled to do so by city ordinance. This has caused buildings like the Chung Pak senior center to crack, threatening the lives of all the low-income elderly residents. Lee also predicts that many buildings will also lean towards destabilized areas.Lee and others have demanded that the city pay for an independent monitor of Gramercy Group as well as requested environmental reports without success. New York City’s mayor, former police officer Eric Adams, ran during election season on a platform to deny the building of the jail. After winning the race, he reneged on his promise. He has even nearly doubled the jail budget to $16B, but cut funding for and thus ended the thirty-year community composting program.“Every day that went by for the last five years, this project has increased by four million dollars,” said Lee.The cost of choosing policing over peoplePolice and prisons have resulted in not just a climate toll, but also a human cost.“[The Texas Department of Criminal Justice or TDCJ policy states] that incarcerated individuals can have water whenever they choose to have water and that is not the case,” said Amite Dominick, President of TPCA. “Just because it’s policy doesn’t mean it’s procedure.” In 2023, Texas prisons raised the price of bottled water by 50% from $4.80 to $7.20 per pack. Most incarcerated Texans earn zero dollars for their labor.Without access to air conditioning or water, Texas imprisoned people were described as literally cooking and have resorted to flooding toilets, laying in the unsanitary water or dunking their clothes in it in order to cool off. The impact on mental health is devastating.“One recent study found that days with unsafe heat index levels raised daily violent interactions by 20%,” said Deitch. “Suicide rates go up in the summer.”Atlanta climate advocates also experienced extreme treatment, including the city council’s dismissal of a petition that bolster approximately 116,000 signatures, racketeering and terror charges. Demands have been made for a formal inquiry into the death of Weelaunee Forest advocate Tortuguita, whose legal name is Manuel Paez Terán and who was killed by over 50 bullets after interacting with Georgia state patrol. Police were not wearing body cameras.Facilities like Cop City are now being planned, have been approved, or are already operating in all 50 states except for Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota. New York City’s mayor recently announced a cop city for the Queens borough to launch in 2030, and has projected that it will cost at least $225M.Police forces, many collaborating across state lines, have also been deployed against climate activists. Tarah Stangler, an autonomous street medic based in Madison, WI, was one of six hundred arrested during the 2021 Line 3 protests by the Northern Lights Task Force, a police coalition of over sixteen counties that received $750,000 from Canadian oil company Enbridge to secure the pipeline. The oil industry, one of the greatest contributors to the climate crisis, has fueled the prison system, and its predecessor enslavement, in some cases like Louisiana as far back as 1901. Chevron sent a prosecuting climate lawyer to jail after paying $18 billion in damages to Indigenous Ecuador Amazonians. The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, with Canadian tax dollars, holds $5.9 million of stock with private prisons Geo Group and Core Civic and invested $186 million in ExxonMobil. Stangler witnessed brutality, experienced pepper spray, even was battered by low-flying helicopters.“[Police] are protecting property over people and focusing on us stopping them rather than stopping the climate catastrophe,” said Stangler. “This is very clear what y’all are here for, and it’s not for us.”Indigenous-led solutions offer a path to decarceration and climate justiceStangler aligned with Indigenous leadership and political thought to solve the linked crises. Indigenous people are held in state and federal prisons at double the national rate and four times that of white people. The incarceration rate between 2000 and 2019 increased by 89%. Across all demographics, 62% returned to prison between 2016-2019.Alaskan Native leader Talia Eames, Recovery Manager at The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, proposed in 2020 recovery facilities built to resemble traditional multi-generational and multi-family long houses for recently released people to assist in their re-entry into the community. Indigenous legal collectives like the Tribal Defense Office of the Salish and Kootenai Tribes collaborated with the Bronx Defender to adapt their holistic defense as a legal practice.“Providing supportive housing and resources is actually a move for public safety,” Eames to the Juneau Empire in July 2020. “It’s the only way to impact recidivism.”Alongside Native and preventative solutions, Lee in New York City’s Chinatown has called for adaptive reuse instead of the mega jail.“It’s a much more green answer because we are not literally taking two enormous steel-reinforced gigantic jails and putting them into landfills,” said Lee. Although the procedure will most likely save the city billions of dollars and reduce its impact on the climate, the city rejected Lee’s idea.Both Lee and Dominick call for independent monitors in their respective situations. Dominick went even further, believing that the true resolution should come in stages, including setting a legal standard for water, AC units, ensuring that incarcerated people become a protected class, federal standards, until ultimately reducing the number of prisons.“We have too many prisons,” said Dominick. “We need to look at alternatives.”A joint report from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights corroborated Dominick’s assessment, especially the prisons most susceptible to climate change. It notes that people in prisons, especially the elderly and/or with disability, are most susceptible to the climate crisis because of a failure in policy to protect them or create emergency plans during fires, flooding, or other climate emergencies. The revenue saved, in California State’s context $106,000 per year per person, could then be used to fund climate solutions.Activists now face the greatest challenge: convincing elected officials to fund climate solutions and not the climate crisis like prisons and cop cities. Whether through the democratic process or direct democracy, disconnecting money between prisons and environmental catastrophe seems the paramount solution.Winona LaDuke, a Native American climate protector who was also arrested at the Line 3 protests, provides in her book Recovering The Sacred a solution already happening in some Native communities: a shift away from the oil industry and into democratizing the sacred power of wind energy as a means of reclaiming economic power. Such defunding of the oil industry might also catalyze the decline of investment in prisons.“The power of transformation is growing stronger these days,” she writes in the book. “Native American communities are creating momentum for change [...] providing solutions that all of us will need in order to survive the next millennium.”Rohan Zhou-Lee (They/Siya/祂(Tā)/Elle) is a queer/nonbinary Black Asian dancer, writer, and organizer. A 2023 Open City Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, they have written for Newsweek, Prism Reports, NextShark, and more. Siya is also the founder of the award-winning Blasian March, a Black-Asian-Blasian grassroots solidarity organization, and for their work has been featured on CNN, NBC Chicago, USA Today, WNYC, and more. Zhou-Lee has spoken on organizing, human rights, and other subjects at New York University, The University of Tokyo, the 2022 Unite and Enough Festivals in Zürich, Switzerland, Harvard University, and more. www.diaryofafirebird.com

Facilities like Cop City are now being planned, have been approved, or are already operating in all 50 states except for Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota.

As climate catastrophe worsens in the US, a disturbing policy trend ensues: expanding prisons and police projects that directly harm the environment and the very communities they claim to serve.

Atlanta serves as a prime example, where plans for the controversial “Cop City” training facility involve destroying a crucial watershed – a pattern shadowing lawmakers from New York City to Texas and across the country.

Atlanta’s proposed police training complex, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents, means clearing 381 acres of the Weelaunee Forest, a vital watershed for primarily Black neighborhoods. The decision, made in the wake of 2020′s Black Lives Matter protests, has left residents further prone to climate catastrophe.

“Forests keep us safe because they soak up heavy rainfall, protecting us from floods,” said Mariah Parker, former Athens-Clarke County commissioner. “Cop city isn’t even built but the destruction of the forest and its replacement with impervious concrete is already putting people in danger.”

Trooper Shot Atlanta Activist Death

In this aerial view, a structure sits on land owned by the city of Atlanta, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, in unincorporated DeKalb County. The Atlanta City Council has approved plans to lease the land to the Atlanta Police Foundation so it can build a state-of-the-art police and firefighter training center, a project that protesters derisively call “Cop City.” (AP Photo/Danny Karnik)AP

Recent extreme flooding, which Parker and other organizers link deforestation for Cop City, have cast a grim foreshadow. Like the rest of the country, Atlanta faces increasingly hotter years. The removal of the Weelaunee Forest further jeopardizes the Black residents already abandoned by the green energy movement due to redlining.

As the deadly effects of climate change continue to sweep across the United States, millions of tax dollars are being poured into building new prisons and police facilities, leaving constituents, especially those of color, vulnerable to environmental catastrophe.

A national trend: Prisons vs. the environment

The pattern of pro-police agendas supersede environmental health and community safety, advocates say.

This year, Texas Prison Community Advocates (TPCA) have filed a formal complaint that amends a 2023 lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The document alleges that temperatures inside cells can have reached as high as 149 degrees Fahrenheit, where prisoners are “cooking to death.” Professor Michele Deitch at the University of Texas Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, warns that such conditions will only worsen with climate change.

Alongside noting antiquated piping in prisons, which often lead to water pollution, Deitch noted that several are built on flood plains, those prone to natural disasters.

“Many prisons are built near toxic sites,” said Deitch. “It’s not unique to Texas, but they’re built near places where there’s chemical exposures and other kinds of toxins.”

Toxic soils threaten New York City’s Chinatown, where the city has approved a 40-story mega jail, part of a borough-based jail to close the notorious Rikers’ Island. Of the five boroughs, Staten Island, majority white and Republican, will not receive a new jail. Soil samples revealed unsafe concentrations of chemicals like benzo anthracene and chrysene, which the CDC said are potentially linked to cancers.

Cop City vs everyone

Matrix New World Engineering Land Surveying Report, July 2019, on behalf of the New York City Office of Management and Budget and New York City Department of Corrections, page 29New York City Office of Management and Budget

[source: Matrix New World Engineering Land Surveying Report, July 2019, on behalf of the New York City Office of Management and Budget and New York City Department of Corrections, page 29]

Chinatown advocates like Jan Lee, member of Neighbors United Below Canal, have alleged with documentation that Gramercy Group, the company contracted by the city, failed to adhere to environmental safety procedures and self-report these and worker injuries, as they are compelled to do so by city ordinance. This has caused buildings like the Chung Pak senior center to crack, threatening the lives of all the low-income elderly residents. Lee also predicts that many buildings will also lean towards destabilized areas.

Lee and others have demanded that the city pay for an independent monitor of Gramercy Group as well as requested environmental reports without success. New York City’s mayor, former police officer Eric Adams, ran during election season on a platform to deny the building of the jail. After winning the race, he reneged on his promise. He has even nearly doubled the jail budget to $16B, but cut funding for and thus ended the thirty-year community composting program.

“Every day that went by for the last five years, this project has increased by four million dollars,” said Lee.

The cost of choosing policing over people

Police and prisons have resulted in not just a climate toll, but also a human cost.

“[The Texas Department of Criminal Justice or TDCJ policy states] that incarcerated individuals can have water whenever they choose to have water and that is not the case,” said Amite Dominick, President of TPCA. “Just because it’s policy doesn’t mean it’s procedure.” In 2023, Texas prisons raised the price of bottled water by 50% from $4.80 to $7.20 per pack. Most incarcerated Texans earn zero dollars for their labor.

Without access to air conditioning or water, Texas imprisoned people were described as literally cooking and have resorted to flooding toilets, laying in the unsanitary water or dunking their clothes in it in order to cool off. The impact on mental health is devastating.

“One recent study found that days with unsafe heat index levels raised daily violent interactions by 20%,” said Deitch. “Suicide rates go up in the summer.”

Atlanta climate advocates also experienced extreme treatment, including the city council’s dismissal of a petition that bolster approximately 116,000 signatures, racketeering and terror charges. Demands have been made for a formal inquiry into the death of Weelaunee Forest advocate Tortuguita, whose legal name is Manuel Paez Terán and who was killed by over 50 bullets after interacting with Georgia state patrol. Police were not wearing body cameras.

Facilities like Cop City are now being planned, have been approved, or are already operating in all 50 states except for Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota. New York City’s mayor recently announced a cop city for the Queens borough to launch in 2030, and has projected that it will cost at least $225M.

Police forces, many collaborating across state lines, have also been deployed against climate activists. Tarah Stangler, an autonomous street medic based in Madison, WI, was one of six hundred arrested during the 2021 Line 3 protests by the Northern Lights Task Force, a police coalition of over sixteen counties that received $750,000 from Canadian oil company Enbridge to secure the pipeline. The oil industry, one of the greatest contributors to the climate crisis, has fueled the prison system, and its predecessor enslavement, in some cases like Louisiana as far back as 1901. Chevron sent a prosecuting climate lawyer to jail after paying $18 billion in damages to Indigenous Ecuador Amazonians. The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, with Canadian tax dollars, holds $5.9 million of stock with private prisons Geo Group and Core Civic and invested $186 million in ExxonMobil. Stangler witnessed brutality, experienced pepper spray, even was battered by low-flying helicopters.

“[Police] are protecting property over people and focusing on us stopping them rather than stopping the climate catastrophe,” said Stangler. “This is very clear what y’all are here for, and it’s not for us.”

Indigenous-led solutions offer a path to decarceration and climate justice

Stangler aligned with Indigenous leadership and political thought to solve the linked crises. Indigenous people are held in state and federal prisons at double the national rate and four times that of white people. The incarceration rate between 2000 and 2019 increased by 89%. Across all demographics, 62% returned to prison between 2016-2019.

Alaskan Native leader Talia Eames, Recovery Manager at The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, proposed in 2020 recovery facilities built to resemble traditional multi-generational and multi-family long houses for recently released people to assist in their re-entry into the community. Indigenous legal collectives like the Tribal Defense Office of the Salish and Kootenai Tribes collaborated with the Bronx Defender to adapt their holistic defense as a legal practice.

“Providing supportive housing and resources is actually a move for public safety,” Eames to the Juneau Empire in July 2020. “It’s the only way to impact recidivism.”

Alongside Native and preventative solutions, Lee in New York City’s Chinatown has called for adaptive reuse instead of the mega jail.

“It’s a much more green answer because we are not literally taking two enormous steel-reinforced gigantic jails and putting them into landfills,” said Lee. Although the procedure will most likely save the city billions of dollars and reduce its impact on the climate, the city rejected Lee’s idea.

Both Lee and Dominick call for independent monitors in their respective situations. Dominick went even further, believing that the true resolution should come in stages, including setting a legal standard for water, AC units, ensuring that incarcerated people become a protected class, federal standards, until ultimately reducing the number of prisons.

“We have too many prisons,” said Dominick. “We need to look at alternatives.”

A joint report from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Ella Baker Center for Human Rights corroborated Dominick’s assessment, especially the prisons most susceptible to climate change. It notes that people in prisons, especially the elderly and/or with disability, are most susceptible to the climate crisis because of a failure in policy to protect them or create emergency plans during fires, flooding, or other climate emergencies. The revenue saved, in California State’s context $106,000 per year per person, could then be used to fund climate solutions.

Activists now face the greatest challenge: convincing elected officials to fund climate solutions and not the climate crisis like prisons and cop cities. Whether through the democratic process or direct democracy, disconnecting money between prisons and environmental catastrophe seems the paramount solution.

Winona LaDuke, a Native American climate protector who was also arrested at the Line 3 protests, provides in her book Recovering The Sacred a solution already happening in some Native communities: a shift away from the oil industry and into democratizing the sacred power of wind energy as a means of reclaiming economic power. Such defunding of the oil industry might also catalyze the decline of investment in prisons.

“The power of transformation is growing stronger these days,” she writes in the book. “Native American communities are creating momentum for change [...] providing solutions that all of us will need in order to survive the next millennium.”

Rohan Zhou-Lee (They/Siya/祂(Tā)/Elle) is a queer/nonbinary Black Asian dancer, writer, and organizer. A 2023 Open City Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, they have written for Newsweek, Prism Reports, NextShark, and more. Siya is also the founder of the award-winning Blasian March, a Black-Asian-Blasian grassroots solidarity organization, and for their work has been featured on CNN, NBC Chicago, USA Today, WNYC, and more. Zhou-Lee has spoken on organizing, human rights, and other subjects at New York University, The University of Tokyo, the 2022 Unite and Enough Festivals in Zürich, Switzerland, Harvard University, and more. www.diaryofafirebird.com

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The Flawed Ideology That Unites Grass-Fed Beef Fans and Anti-Vaxxers

Few environmental documentaries boast the star power of Common Ground, a forthcoming sequel to Netflix’s award-winning 2020 documentary Kiss the Ground, which presented regenerative agriculture as the “first viable solution to the climate crisis.” Executive produced by Demi Moore with narration from Jason Momoa, Donald Glover, Rosario Dawson, Laura Dern, and other celebs, the new film is set to be released on Amazon Prime Video this Earth Day. It features a diverse mix of food and farming activists, wellness influencers, and even two U.S. senators (Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Mike Braun), all linked by a common narrative that farming should work with nature rather than against it to save our food system. The film is just one example of the increasing popularity of this thesis among everyone from Hollywood A-listers to lefty food sovereignty activists to right-leaning podcasters and the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement. Nowhere are regenerative ag’s claims bolder than when it comes to “regenerative” beef, whose evangelists insist that by capturing carbon in the soil, natural cattle grazing can completely eliminate the climate impact of raising ruminants, which currently contributes somewhere between 11 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately for the planet, these claims don’t pan out. Earlier this month, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a new study that found grass-fed beef has no climate benefits over industrial beef and likely doesn’t help much with arable soil carbon sequestration, either. For those who follow the peer-reviewed literature on agriculture and climate, this is no surprise. Proponents of regenerative agriculture have several useful ideas worth pursuing, but at the end of the day, cows are still cows and they still belch lots of methane, so beef is not and never will be a “solution” to the climate crisis.And yet, no matter how many studies get published, the hype around this and other “natural” fixes for environmental and health problems shows few signs of slowing down, winning adherents from across the social and political spectrum, and now finding its way into the executive branch. New Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken about regenerative farming in near-magical terms, claiming that “the best thing that you can do for climate is to restore the soils.” He has also boosted the supposed health benefits of fries cooked in beef tallow (as opposed to seed oils), championed raw milk, called for a “let it rip” bird flu strategy, in the hopes of promoting “natural immunity” among chickens, and proselytized about remedies like cod liver oil to stop the measles outbreaks spreading among primarily unvaccinated people in Texas and New Mexico.The proponents of these approaches tend to get one thing right: There are countless problems with the U.S. food and health systems. Industrialized animal agriculture harms the environment, workers, and animals; chronic diet-related disease has reached epidemic proportions; and powerful corporate interests are blocking change. But where they go wrong is believing that there is a simple, “natural” solution that will solve all of these issues in one swoop. The problem is not just the way that natural is equated with good—a dynamic that has a long and storied history. The bigger issue—and one that goes beyond regenerative beef—is an emerging ideology of nature-based solutionism, where all things “natural” are proposed as a sure fix for complex problems. Be it Common Ground or MAHA, the adherents of this ideology assume that a better world will emerge from letting “nature” run its course, no matter what the experts or regulators say.Troubled by the ambitious and even outlandish promises emerging from the tech sector in the Obama era, writer Evgeny Morozov popularized the term solutionism to describe the shared belief across government and industry that Silicon Valley capital and know-how could revolutionize the modern world—that blood tests could be instantly performed from a single drop, that predictive policing algorithms would end crime as we know it, and that if only billions of people logged onto Facebook then digital connection would lead to mutual understanding. It’s not that these pitches were overly optimistic. Optimism suggests some recognition that things might not go as planned, which wasn’t what prospective investors and TED audiences wanted to hear. No, the tech industry’s disruptors had to be sure that their technology was world-changing—or at least sound like they were sure.These solutions rarely if ever lived up to the hype, and some were outright failures. Most stumbled over the all-too-common mistake of not taking the time to understand the problems they were trying to solve; assuming that a technological solution was always needed, largely because that’s what they had on hand. They depended too much on the technocratic application of science, forgetting that the social sciences matter too, eschewing policy reform and cultural change as too messy, only to realize later that the success of any technology depends on policy and culture. Several books and countless articles have now been written about technological solutionism’s failures in food and agriculture, energy and the environment, and as part of the Covid-19 pandemic response. Today’s ubiquitous progressive refrain that “tech won’t save us” (to quote the name of a popular podcast) speaks to an emerging recognition of technology’s limited ability, absent a broader political strategy, to effect positive social change.But while the critics may be louder, those solutionists persist, perhaps most visibly today in the pursuit of artificial intelligence that, we are told, will solve pretty much everything, including the federal government’s alleged inefficiencies.While tech solutionism was booming, a different sort of solutionism was brewing in the background, rooted in the idea that it was modern technology that was at the root of many of our problems. But instead of scaling back tech solutionism’s delusions, this parallel revolution kept the delusions and swapped the solution: a return to our preindustrial roots could help us fix the world’s most intractable problems. On the topic of agriculture, this perspective appeared in bestselling food books like Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, especially in the form of its protagonist Joel Salatin, a libertarian small-scale farmer who championed free-grazing animals and opposition to federal regulations as the solution to the ills of the modern food system. It also found its way onto the TED stage, where “Rhodesian” farmer Allan Savory—also featured in Kiss the Ground—made the now-omnipresent claim in regenerative agricultural circles that so-called “holistic grazing” could reverse desertification and climate change. That TED talk has been viewed over nine million times, attracting big money support in the process. Oprah Winfrey meanwhile gave a platform to wellness gurus who touted the benefits of natural cures, including Dr. Oz, who claimed that saffron was a “miracle appetite suppressant.” And all of that was before the food and wellness influencers of the social media era took over Instagram and TikTok.Supercharged by the skepticism of the Covid-19 pandemic era, the line between legitimate critique of our public health and food infrastructures and pseudoscience grifting got increasingly blurry. Figures often celebrated as heroes within the alternative food and regenerative agriculture movements—from Joel Salatin to food sovereignty activist Vandana Shiva to functional medicine doctor Mark Hyman (the latter a cast member of Common Ground)—built common cause with some of the internet’s biggest sources of health misinformation and helped lay the groundwork for the rise of MAHA, often hawking natural health products in the process. Amplified to huge audiences by the likes of Joe Rogan and Russell Brand, their claims reverberated around the internet without a fact-check in sight.The appeal of many “natural” claims is obvious. The world is complicated, confusing, and often corrupt, and those things that seem unsullied by industrial modernity can feel pure and healthful. There’s an attractive truthiness to claims that raw milk must be better than milk that was pasteurized and skimmed of fat in an industrial centrifuge, butter better than seed oil, cows grazing in the field better than those crammed into feedlots. Moreover, nature-based solutionism tantalizingly offers the prospect of a purer world without significant changes in consumption: Regenerative beef and beef tallow mean you can have natural and guilt-free burgers and fries. Each of these assumptions is rooted in a logical fallacy: the appeal to nature, or the view that a thing must be good if it is natural. This claim, of course, stands on shaky epistemological ground. Nature is far from benign, deadly pathogens being just as natural as soil-sequestering carbon. This is compounded by the fact that many appeals to nature are also appeals to an idealized past, like RFK Jr.’s desire to “reverse 80 years of farming policy,” before the advent of much modern agricultural technology. The British journalist George Monbiot calls this “storybook farming,” or a romanticization of the preindustrial past.Such claims are not only inaccurate but potentially dangerous. Where the appeal to nature really falls apart is when it is scrutinized using the scientific method, which has a decidedly unromantic way of cutting through just-so stories. Studies like the one mentioned at the beginning of this essay have shown that free-ranging cows emit just as much methane as those fattened on industrial feedlots; others have suggested that they might even emit more. Research consistently shows that raw milk is not more nutritious than pasteurized milk, will not cure asthma, and has no impact on gut health, but it is certainly less safe to drink. Recent publications suggest it’s the seed oils and not the butter that are more associated with lower cancer and cardiovascular disease risk. And letting a disease spread to develop natural immunity is a far more risky way to do exactly what vaccines are meant to do: expose people to small amounts of a disease so that they can develop immunity to it. Furthermore, in the case of diseases like avian flu, letting the virus run wild in hopes of finding the few birds who have natural immunity risks allowing the disease to mutate further, potentially increasing the risk for both animals and humans. As RFK Jr. promotes the benefits of “pox parties” as a natural way to boost immunity to measles, doctors scramble to convince parents otherwise. For some who follow his suggestion to dose their kids with vitamin A instead of a vaccine, the liver damage has already been done.The problem with techno-solutionism was never the technology itself. The benefits of many technologies are all around us, making food abundant and keeping us safer from disease than we would otherwise be. Pasteurization and vaccines alone have saved hundreds of millions of lives. The problem, rather, was the way technology was assumed to be a cure-all and a one-size-fits-all fix.Like its technological parallel, a defining characteristic of the ideology of nature-based solutionism is that its solutions are already decided upon before the fact, their success considered inevitable—natural, as it were—if only they can be implemented, which often means rejecting most technology altogether. Changing from conventional to regenerative agriculture, for instance, is believed to solve desertification, climate change, soil health, our ailing rural economies, our woeful eating habits, and whatever other problems confront its advocates. There is a presumed lack of friction in implementing such solutions, with legitimate critiques of technical, environmental, or economic feasibility, or of trade-offs and costs, hand-waved away. Solutionisms, as articles of faith, cleave society into believers and nonbelievers: techno-zealots versus Luddites or nature’s children versus those in thrall to Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Government. But this sort of simplification doesn’t just fail to solve problems, it fails to properly identify them. The food system’s many problems are varied and have distinct causes. Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock come from too much demand for meat; the overuse of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides comes partly from market and government incentives to grow more commodity crops destined for animal feed and ethanol; and chronic disease has many causes, only some of which are related to diet. Correctly identifying and addressing each of these problems takes research, time, and often a range of different solutions.But solutionists either underappreciate or openly fight the very things that help us understand problems in all their nuance and craft realistic solutions: research institutions and the regulatory state. Both of these operate on the belief that large claims require large bodies of proof. In the course of reviewing evidence, for instance, they might note that real-world examples show that the financial and labor costs of transitions to low-tech agriculture can be hefty, the benefits uncertain, and the potential for corporate co-optation and greenwashing very real. But in the world of the solutionists, expertise is treated as suspect, corrupt, or altogether illegitimate, with anecdotes and mantras replacing verifiable data.Ironically, this can lead the solutionists to overlook the real nature-based solutions demonstrably effective at improving health and food system sustainability. Eating lower on the food chain, reducing food waste, protecting ecosystems, and promoting conservation agriculture are some of the best climate solutions out there. They are not flashy, they won’t solve all of our problems, they likely don’t make for the most views on streaming platforms or the most memorable stump speeches, but at least they’re backed by science. Being wary of solutionisms is ever more crucial as solutionists permeate our media and increasingly hold political power. The embrace of AI exists side by side with the embrace of regenerative ranching. One side wants to move fast and break things, giving little consideration to what gets broken. The other side wants to eat grass-fed burgers, hoping that good vibes can capture carbon. Neither approach is going to save us.

Few environmental documentaries boast the star power of Common Ground, a forthcoming sequel to Netflix’s award-winning 2020 documentary Kiss the Ground, which presented regenerative agriculture as the “first viable solution to the climate crisis.” Executive produced by Demi Moore with narration from Jason Momoa, Donald Glover, Rosario Dawson, Laura Dern, and other celebs, the new film is set to be released on Amazon Prime Video this Earth Day. It features a diverse mix of food and farming activists, wellness influencers, and even two U.S. senators (Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Mike Braun), all linked by a common narrative that farming should work with nature rather than against it to save our food system. The film is just one example of the increasing popularity of this thesis among everyone from Hollywood A-listers to lefty food sovereignty activists to right-leaning podcasters and the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement. Nowhere are regenerative ag’s claims bolder than when it comes to “regenerative” beef, whose evangelists insist that by capturing carbon in the soil, natural cattle grazing can completely eliminate the climate impact of raising ruminants, which currently contributes somewhere between 11 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately for the planet, these claims don’t pan out. Earlier this month, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a new study that found grass-fed beef has no climate benefits over industrial beef and likely doesn’t help much with arable soil carbon sequestration, either. For those who follow the peer-reviewed literature on agriculture and climate, this is no surprise. Proponents of regenerative agriculture have several useful ideas worth pursuing, but at the end of the day, cows are still cows and they still belch lots of methane, so beef is not and never will be a “solution” to the climate crisis.And yet, no matter how many studies get published, the hype around this and other “natural” fixes for environmental and health problems shows few signs of slowing down, winning adherents from across the social and political spectrum, and now finding its way into the executive branch. New Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken about regenerative farming in near-magical terms, claiming that “the best thing that you can do for climate is to restore the soils.” He has also boosted the supposed health benefits of fries cooked in beef tallow (as opposed to seed oils), championed raw milk, called for a “let it rip” bird flu strategy, in the hopes of promoting “natural immunity” among chickens, and proselytized about remedies like cod liver oil to stop the measles outbreaks spreading among primarily unvaccinated people in Texas and New Mexico.The proponents of these approaches tend to get one thing right: There are countless problems with the U.S. food and health systems. Industrialized animal agriculture harms the environment, workers, and animals; chronic diet-related disease has reached epidemic proportions; and powerful corporate interests are blocking change. But where they go wrong is believing that there is a simple, “natural” solution that will solve all of these issues in one swoop. The problem is not just the way that natural is equated with good—a dynamic that has a long and storied history. The bigger issue—and one that goes beyond regenerative beef—is an emerging ideology of nature-based solutionism, where all things “natural” are proposed as a sure fix for complex problems. Be it Common Ground or MAHA, the adherents of this ideology assume that a better world will emerge from letting “nature” run its course, no matter what the experts or regulators say.Troubled by the ambitious and even outlandish promises emerging from the tech sector in the Obama era, writer Evgeny Morozov popularized the term solutionism to describe the shared belief across government and industry that Silicon Valley capital and know-how could revolutionize the modern world—that blood tests could be instantly performed from a single drop, that predictive policing algorithms would end crime as we know it, and that if only billions of people logged onto Facebook then digital connection would lead to mutual understanding. It’s not that these pitches were overly optimistic. Optimism suggests some recognition that things might not go as planned, which wasn’t what prospective investors and TED audiences wanted to hear. No, the tech industry’s disruptors had to be sure that their technology was world-changing—or at least sound like they were sure.These solutions rarely if ever lived up to the hype, and some were outright failures. Most stumbled over the all-too-common mistake of not taking the time to understand the problems they were trying to solve; assuming that a technological solution was always needed, largely because that’s what they had on hand. They depended too much on the technocratic application of science, forgetting that the social sciences matter too, eschewing policy reform and cultural change as too messy, only to realize later that the success of any technology depends on policy and culture. Several books and countless articles have now been written about technological solutionism’s failures in food and agriculture, energy and the environment, and as part of the Covid-19 pandemic response. Today’s ubiquitous progressive refrain that “tech won’t save us” (to quote the name of a popular podcast) speaks to an emerging recognition of technology’s limited ability, absent a broader political strategy, to effect positive social change.But while the critics may be louder, those solutionists persist, perhaps most visibly today in the pursuit of artificial intelligence that, we are told, will solve pretty much everything, including the federal government’s alleged inefficiencies.While tech solutionism was booming, a different sort of solutionism was brewing in the background, rooted in the idea that it was modern technology that was at the root of many of our problems. But instead of scaling back tech solutionism’s delusions, this parallel revolution kept the delusions and swapped the solution: a return to our preindustrial roots could help us fix the world’s most intractable problems. On the topic of agriculture, this perspective appeared in bestselling food books like Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, especially in the form of its protagonist Joel Salatin, a libertarian small-scale farmer who championed free-grazing animals and opposition to federal regulations as the solution to the ills of the modern food system. It also found its way onto the TED stage, where “Rhodesian” farmer Allan Savory—also featured in Kiss the Ground—made the now-omnipresent claim in regenerative agricultural circles that so-called “holistic grazing” could reverse desertification and climate change. That TED talk has been viewed over nine million times, attracting big money support in the process. Oprah Winfrey meanwhile gave a platform to wellness gurus who touted the benefits of natural cures, including Dr. Oz, who claimed that saffron was a “miracle appetite suppressant.” And all of that was before the food and wellness influencers of the social media era took over Instagram and TikTok.Supercharged by the skepticism of the Covid-19 pandemic era, the line between legitimate critique of our public health and food infrastructures and pseudoscience grifting got increasingly blurry. Figures often celebrated as heroes within the alternative food and regenerative agriculture movements—from Joel Salatin to food sovereignty activist Vandana Shiva to functional medicine doctor Mark Hyman (the latter a cast member of Common Ground)—built common cause with some of the internet’s biggest sources of health misinformation and helped lay the groundwork for the rise of MAHA, often hawking natural health products in the process. Amplified to huge audiences by the likes of Joe Rogan and Russell Brand, their claims reverberated around the internet without a fact-check in sight.The appeal of many “natural” claims is obvious. The world is complicated, confusing, and often corrupt, and those things that seem unsullied by industrial modernity can feel pure and healthful. There’s an attractive truthiness to claims that raw milk must be better than milk that was pasteurized and skimmed of fat in an industrial centrifuge, butter better than seed oil, cows grazing in the field better than those crammed into feedlots. Moreover, nature-based solutionism tantalizingly offers the prospect of a purer world without significant changes in consumption: Regenerative beef and beef tallow mean you can have natural and guilt-free burgers and fries. Each of these assumptions is rooted in a logical fallacy: the appeal to nature, or the view that a thing must be good if it is natural. This claim, of course, stands on shaky epistemological ground. Nature is far from benign, deadly pathogens being just as natural as soil-sequestering carbon. This is compounded by the fact that many appeals to nature are also appeals to an idealized past, like RFK Jr.’s desire to “reverse 80 years of farming policy,” before the advent of much modern agricultural technology. The British journalist George Monbiot calls this “storybook farming,” or a romanticization of the preindustrial past.Such claims are not only inaccurate but potentially dangerous. Where the appeal to nature really falls apart is when it is scrutinized using the scientific method, which has a decidedly unromantic way of cutting through just-so stories. Studies like the one mentioned at the beginning of this essay have shown that free-ranging cows emit just as much methane as those fattened on industrial feedlots; others have suggested that they might even emit more. Research consistently shows that raw milk is not more nutritious than pasteurized milk, will not cure asthma, and has no impact on gut health, but it is certainly less safe to drink. Recent publications suggest it’s the seed oils and not the butter that are more associated with lower cancer and cardiovascular disease risk. And letting a disease spread to develop natural immunity is a far more risky way to do exactly what vaccines are meant to do: expose people to small amounts of a disease so that they can develop immunity to it. Furthermore, in the case of diseases like avian flu, letting the virus run wild in hopes of finding the few birds who have natural immunity risks allowing the disease to mutate further, potentially increasing the risk for both animals and humans. As RFK Jr. promotes the benefits of “pox parties” as a natural way to boost immunity to measles, doctors scramble to convince parents otherwise. For some who follow his suggestion to dose their kids with vitamin A instead of a vaccine, the liver damage has already been done.The problem with techno-solutionism was never the technology itself. The benefits of many technologies are all around us, making food abundant and keeping us safer from disease than we would otherwise be. Pasteurization and vaccines alone have saved hundreds of millions of lives. The problem, rather, was the way technology was assumed to be a cure-all and a one-size-fits-all fix.Like its technological parallel, a defining characteristic of the ideology of nature-based solutionism is that its solutions are already decided upon before the fact, their success considered inevitable—natural, as it were—if only they can be implemented, which often means rejecting most technology altogether. Changing from conventional to regenerative agriculture, for instance, is believed to solve desertification, climate change, soil health, our ailing rural economies, our woeful eating habits, and whatever other problems confront its advocates. There is a presumed lack of friction in implementing such solutions, with legitimate critiques of technical, environmental, or economic feasibility, or of trade-offs and costs, hand-waved away. Solutionisms, as articles of faith, cleave society into believers and nonbelievers: techno-zealots versus Luddites or nature’s children versus those in thrall to Big Food, Big Ag, Big Pharma, and Big Government. But this sort of simplification doesn’t just fail to solve problems, it fails to properly identify them. The food system’s many problems are varied and have distinct causes. Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock come from too much demand for meat; the overuse of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides comes partly from market and government incentives to grow more commodity crops destined for animal feed and ethanol; and chronic disease has many causes, only some of which are related to diet. Correctly identifying and addressing each of these problems takes research, time, and often a range of different solutions.But solutionists either underappreciate or openly fight the very things that help us understand problems in all their nuance and craft realistic solutions: research institutions and the regulatory state. Both of these operate on the belief that large claims require large bodies of proof. In the course of reviewing evidence, for instance, they might note that real-world examples show that the financial and labor costs of transitions to low-tech agriculture can be hefty, the benefits uncertain, and the potential for corporate co-optation and greenwashing very real. But in the world of the solutionists, expertise is treated as suspect, corrupt, or altogether illegitimate, with anecdotes and mantras replacing verifiable data.Ironically, this can lead the solutionists to overlook the real nature-based solutions demonstrably effective at improving health and food system sustainability. Eating lower on the food chain, reducing food waste, protecting ecosystems, and promoting conservation agriculture are some of the best climate solutions out there. They are not flashy, they won’t solve all of our problems, they likely don’t make for the most views on streaming platforms or the most memorable stump speeches, but at least they’re backed by science. Being wary of solutionisms is ever more crucial as solutionists permeate our media and increasingly hold political power. The embrace of AI exists side by side with the embrace of regenerative ranching. One side wants to move fast and break things, giving little consideration to what gets broken. The other side wants to eat grass-fed burgers, hoping that good vibes can capture carbon. Neither approach is going to save us.

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Egg prices hit record highs. Are you ready to try a vegan egg?

Bird flu has apparently done what environmentalists have long dreamed of: made Americans curious about egg alternatives.

Sometimes, Josh Tetrick will quiz strangers in the dairy aisle. He’ll strike up a conversation with a fellow grocery store patron and ask if they’ve heard about “this egg that’s made from plants?” He might point out the golden-yellow boxes shaped like milk cartons sitting on refrigerated shelves, not too far from the egg cartons. Generally, he finds that people don’t know what he’s talking about. “Most people will be like, ‘What?’” The product Tetrick is referring to — which, not coincidentally, he manufactures — is called Just Egg. It’s a liquid vegan egg substitute made from mung beans, a member of the legume family, and it’s designed to scramble just like a real chicken egg when cooked over heat. (The company also sells frozen omelette-style patties that can be heated up in a toaster oven and frozen breakfast burritos.) Along with his best friend Josh Balk, Tetrick cofounded the company Eat Just, formerly known as Hampton Creek, which developed Just Egg over years of testing. On a recent call with Grist, Tetrick described the products — which are meant to look, taste, and cook like real eggs — as “definitely, definitely weird.” But lately, Tetrick says the team at Eat Just has been hearing from restaurant owners and chefs overcoming the weirdness to inquire about becoming new customers — in part because avian influenza has sent egg prices soaring in January and February in the United States. Nationally, the average cost of a dozen large eggs rose to about $5.90 last month, up almost 100 percent from a year before, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In expensive cities like New York and San Francisco, a dozen eggs could cost $10 or more. The pressure has raised prices at some bakeries, brunch spots, and bodegas slinging bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwiches — and has made some buyers and consumers more open to alternatives.  Tetrick has said that Just Egg’s sales are now five times higher than at this time last year, and that a majority of its customers are omnivores. The latest outbreak of avian flu has apparently done what environmentalists and animal rights activists have long dreamed of: made Americans curious about vegan eggs. It’s a development that could indicate how consumers may learn to gradually embrace more environmentally sustainable options. The environmental benefits of not eating meat or dairy have long been documented. A quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the way we grow and produce food; within that, livestock — which includes raising animals for eggs and dairy — is responsible for about a third.  But brands that have tried to capitalize on the climate case for eating plant-based protein have failed to win over customers. Beyond Meat has struggled to reach profitability, while the CEO of Impossible Foods says the industry has done a “lousy job” of appealing to consumers.  Producing eggs has a lower environmental impact than raising beef and other forms of animal protein — but growing feed for laying hens still requires a significant amount of land and resources. Eat Just claims that making its mung bean-based alt-egg uses significantly less land and water than the conventional chicken egg. But Tetrick said its most effective marketing strategy is highlighting the benefits of eating a “healthier protein” for breakfast. For instance, Just Egg contains zero milligrams of cholesterol per serving, while one large chicken egg contains about 180 milligrams.  Josh Tetrick, CEO of the food tech company Eat Just, said sales of its vegan egg substitute are five times higher than last year. Eat Just Over the years, Tetrick’s company, which also houses the cultivated meat subsidiary Good Meat, has received criticism for allegedly exaggerating its environmental claims and sales figures. In 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the company — then called Hampton Creek — removed the climate benefits of its vegan mayonnaise product, Just Mayo, from its website after an external audit found they were inaccurate. Previously, Bloomberg reported that Hampton Creek had instructed contractors to buy back its vegan mayo from stores. Tetrick said that the buybacks were for quality assurance purposes only, but in 2016 both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission launched inquiries into the company for potentially inflating its sales numbers. The following year, both investigations were dropped.     Those in the plant-based industry say that once vegan alternatives taste as good as real meat and cost the same or less, then sales will go up. Entrepreneurs and advocates have focused on developing the technology, supply chains, and economies of scale needed to lower the price of animal-free protein products. But the current situation with vegan eggs suggests that change can also happen when the animal-based option becomes much more expensive. Prices vary from store to store and region to region, but on the online store for the Manhattan West location of Whole Foods, one 16-ounce carton of Just Egg, the equivalent of about 10 small eggs, costs $7.89. Meanwhile, a dozen eggs, depending on the brand, run from about $7 to up to $13.  Tetrick said that the newly interested potential customers currently talking to Eat Just aren’t motivated by climate change or animal welfare. Their point of view, in his words, is that they’re tired of the unpredictability of egg prices going up and down. That exasperation, he added, “is probably the most effective lens for change.” Earlier this month, Eat Just launched a campaign in New York City advertising its vegan breakfast sandwiches, sold at bodegas, as a “Bird Flu Bailout.” The company’s website cheekily boasts, “We’re in stock.” Founders of vegan egg companies argue that the root cause of price volatility for meat, eggs, and dairy is not any one disease or policy, but the way the United States raises animals. “When you cram animals together in really tight spaces, they’re gonna get sick,” said Tetrick. “It’s not Trump’s fault. It’s not MAGA’s fault. It’s just biology.”  A 2023 report by the United Nations Environmental Programme cited alternative proteins — meaning plant-based foods, as well as cultivated meat and fermentation-derived products — as a way to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks. Raising animals for human consumption requires a lot of antibiotics, which raises the risk of creating antibiotic-resistant pathogens. It also creates ideal conditions for viruses to spread, evolve, and cross over to new species. Lowering the global demand for animal protein could greatly reduce those risks. Or as Tetrick put it, “You can pack mung beans into tiny little spaces all you want. They’re not getting the flu.” Hema Reddy, who developed the vegan hard-boiled egg brand WunderEggs during the COVID-19 pandemic, offered a similar critique of industrial animal agriculture. “If the chickens are crowded together, then disease will follow,” she said. “The only solution,” she posited, “is to change the way we farm. And that’s a big step. It’s like moving the Titanic.” WunderEggs are made from almonds, cashews, and coconut milk and are currently sold in stores and online. Like Tetrick, Reddy says she has heard from plenty of newly interested restaurants in the last few months. But she is reluctant to draw long-term conclusions from it, arguing that consumer behavior doesn’t change that quickly. Many people, she argued, “probably want to eat eggs, they’re missing eggs,” and “they’re going to wait for things to get better.” Nationally, the average cost of a dozen large eggs rose to about $5.90 in February, up almost 100 percent from a year before. Zeng Hui / Xinhua via Getty Images But for some adoptees of vegan egg substitutes, the upsides of ditching chicken eggs is obvious. Chef Jason Hull, director of food services at Marin Country Day School in the Bay Area, has been using Just Egg for years. “They have nailed the delicious flavor of egg,” said Hull. He swaps out regular eggs for the plant-based version in baked goods like cookies, muffins, and quick breads, as well as in dishes like fried rice. There’s virtually no difference, he said. While he’s a longtime fan of the brand, the uptick in egg prices has validated his decision. “Especially with egg prices right now, I’m not going to use chicken eggs for baking or fried rice or things like that any time soon,” he said. Hull said some of his peers, especially those in other parts of the country, are potentially less open-minded about vegan egg substitutes. But rising costs may have them reconsidering. Other chefs are “warming up to it, absolutely,” he said. “And the high egg prices are kind of forcing that warm-up.” Wholesale egg prices are trending downward as of March, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, so this momentum could be short-lived. But it may only be a matter of time before the next price hike happens. “Because the virus is so ubiquitous in so many different environments … it’s hard to imagine the virus ever completely going away at this point,” said Maurice Pitesky, an associate professor in cooperative extension at University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Reddy insisted that taking advantage of a cost-of-living crisis to promote her product does not sit right with her, and she prefers to let consumers come to their own conclusions about what’s right for them. But if avian influenza continues to upend egg production in the U.S., that might mean the economic case for going dairy-free could become more and more evident with time. Regardless of what happens in the future, Reddy said, “I really think that now is the time for egg alternatives to shine.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Egg prices hit record highs. Are you ready to try a vegan egg? on Mar 31, 2025.

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California suspends environmental laws to speed rebuilding of utilities after L.A. fires

Gov. Newsom waived CEQA and the California Coastal Act for utilities working to rebuild, and move infrastructure underground, in the Palisades and Eaton fire areas.

In a continued effort to expedite rebuilding after Los Angeles’ devastating firestorms, Gov. Gavin Newsom this week suspended California environmental laws for utility providers working to reinstall key infrastructure. His latest executive order eliminates requirements to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, commonly known as CEQA, and the California Coastal Act for utilities working to rebuild “electric, gas, water, sewer and telecommunication infrastructure” in the Palisades and Eaton fire burn zones. Newsom also continued to encourage the “undergrounding” of utility equipment when feasible, which he said will help minimize the future fire risk in these communities. “We are determined to rebuild Altadena, Malibu and Pacific Palisades stronger and more resilient than before,” Newsom said in a statement. “Speeding up the pace that we rebuild our utility systems will help get survivors back home faster and prevent future fires.” The move builds on Newsom’s prior executive orders that exempted work rebuilding homes and businesses destroyed or damaged by the fires as well as wildfire prevention efforts from the two environmental laws. CEQA requires local and state agencies to identify and mitigate environmental impacts of their work. The California Coastal Act, which made permanent the California Coastal Commission, lays out regulations for coastal development and protection. While the laws have been heralded by environmentalists, their processes have long been considered onerous by developers, and residents and officials have urged their requirements be lessened or waived to expedite fire recovery. The Trump administration has also taken issue with the California Coastal Commission — which typically regulates any coastal development as enumerated by the state’s Coastal Act — and has indicated further federal aid could have stipulations that target the commission’s work. “The key now is to make sure that we move quickly to address the needs to underground not just traditional utilities for electricity but also water and sewer lines, and do it concurrently,” Newsom said in a video posted on social media this week. Joshua Smith, a spokesperson for the Coastal Commission, declined to comment on the latest executive order.Previously, the commission’s executive director had clarified that coastal development permits are typically waived after disasters like the L.A. fires, as long as new construction won’t be 10% larger than the destroyed structure it is replacing. That statement, however, has since been removed from the commission’s website. In a letter sent last month, Newsom urged Southern California Edison, the area’s largest electricity provider, to do all it can to rebuild lines underground in these areas.“SCE has the opportunity to build back a more modern, reliable and resilient electric distribution system that can meet the community’s immediate and future needs,” Newsom wrote, adding that he welcomed information and suggestions that would ease such efforts and keep costs down. Installing utilities underground is much more expensive than typical above-ground construction, which has limited the practice. David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesperson, said waiving CEQA and the Coastal Act will help the utility’s ongoing efforts to rebuild and move lines underground.“We appreciate Gov. Newsom’s action to help expedite permitting,” Eisenhauer said. “This will help us continue this process of undergrounding and help the communities rebuild stronger.”Eisenhauer said SoCal Edison is already in the process of reestablishing and moving some of its electrical wires underground in the areas affected by the fires. Some of this work had been planned — and permitted — beforehand, including moving 40 miles of line underground in Altadena and doing likewise with 80 miles in the Palisades area, he said. However, this executive order will help ease the permitting process for future work. It wasn’t immediately clear how other utilities might benefit from the executive order, if at all. Representatives for Southern California Gas Co. and the L.A. Department of Water and Power didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Newsom has previously said his executive orders waiving these environmental laws do not signal a shift in California’s support of such efforts, though many environmental activists worry such broad exemptions could have serious consequences down the road. Bruce Reznik, executive director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, a nonprofit that advocates for clean waterways, said he understands the urgency to rebuild but those efforts need a balance that considers important environmental protections — not blanket waivers and exceptions.“We all want to see the rebuilding happen as quickly as we can … but we also have to be smart about it,” Reznik said. “We have to build recognizing the reality of today’s climate change.”He said the natural space in Altadena and Pacific Palisades was a big part of why people loved living there, and it’s important to protect those areas — as CEQA and the California Coastal Act do. “These laws play a really critical role in making sure as we rebuild we’re doing it with an eye toward climate resilience, protecting against further natural disasters … [and] the health of our waterways and ecosystems,” he said. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the way the governor has operated, and you have to worry about what that will mean.”Susan Jordan, executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network, said Newsom’s continued exemptions build on concerning environmental practices she’s seen in the fires’ aftermath, including the decision not to test soil in affected areas.“I hope that the governor will one day recognize that the Coastal Commission is a willing partner and one of the best tools he has in his toolbox to ensure a quick, informed and coordinated response to establish future long-term resiliency along the coast,” Jordan said in a statement.

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Biden Administration Offshore Oil and Gas Lease in Gulf Coast Is Unlawful, Federal Judge Says

A federal judge has ruled that more than 109,000 square miles of Gulf Coast federal were unlawfully opened up for offshore drilling leases

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An expanse of Gulf Coast federal waters larger than the state of Colorado was unlawfully opened up for offshore drilling leases, according to a ruling by a federal judge, who said the Department of Interior did not adequately account for the offshore drilling leases' impacts on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and an endangered whale species.The future of one of the most recent offshore drilling lease sales authorized under the Biden administration is in jeopardy after District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta’s finding on Thursday that the federal agency violated bedrock environmental regulations when it allowed bidding on 109,375 square miles (283,280 square kilometers) of Gulf Coast waters.Environmental groups, the federal government and the oil and gas industry are now discussing remedies. Earth Justice Attorney George Torgun, representing the plaintiffs, said one outcome on the table is invalidating the sale of leases worth $250 million across 2,500 square miles (6,475 square kilometers) of Gulf federal waters successfully bid on by companies.The leases in the Gulf Coast were expected to produce up to 1.1 billion barrels of oil and more than 4 trillion cubic feet (113 billion cubic meters) of natural gas over 50 years, according to a government analysis. Burning that oil would increase carbon dioxide emissions by tens of millions of tons, the analysis found.The agency “failed to take a ‘hard look’” at the full extent of the carbon footprint of expanding drilling in the Gulf Coast, the judge wrote. The auction was one of three offshore oil and gas lease sales mandated as part of a 2022 climate bill compromise designed to ensure support from now-retired Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading recipient of oil and gas industry donations. Another of the mandated oil and gas lease sales, in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, was overturned by a federal judge last July on similar grounds.“If federal officials are going to continue greenlighting offshore drilling, the least they can do is fully analyze its harms,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director at Friends of the Earth, a nonprofit that is of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “We will keep fighting to put a full stop to this destructive industry, and in the meantime, we will keep a close watch on the government to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and mandates.”The drilling would also threaten the Rice’s whale, a species with less than 100 individuals estimated to remain and which lives exclusively in the Gulf Coast, according to court records filed by environmental advocacy groups.A Department of the Interior spokesperson said the agency could not comment on pending litigation.The process did not meet the standards of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires federal agencies analyzes the environmental impacts of their actions prior to decision-making around federal lands.The American Petroleum Institute, or API, an oil and gas trade association representing more than 600 firms and a party to the Gulf Coast case, said it is evaluating its options after this week's ruling.API spokesperson Scott Lauermann said the case is an example of activists “weaponizing” a permitting process, “underscoring how permitting reform is essential to ensuring access to affordable, reliable energy.” Chevron, a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment and referred The Associated Press to the API's statement.Three offshore oil and gas lease sales are scheduled over the course of the next five years.Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

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Love Motels and Converted Ferries: Brazil Gets Creative to Host COP30

By Manuela Andreoni and Lisandra ParaguassuBELEM, Brazil (Reuters) - Environmental activists from around the globe have eagerly awaited Brazil's...

By Manuela Andreoni and Lisandra ParaguassuBELEM, Brazil (Reuters) - Environmental activists from around the globe have eagerly awaited Brazil's turn hosting the United Nations climate summit, known as COP30, after three years where the conference of world leaders tackling global warming was held in countries without full freedom for public demonstrations. But the so-called "People's COP" may not be as welcoming as they hoped.  Sky-high accommodation costs are threatening Brazil's stated goal of inclusion, and the government is racing to multiply the 18,000 beds now available in the Amazonian host city of Belem, turning to motels aimed at amorous couples, ferries that normally ply the rivers, and school classrooms to host visitors.  President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said his goal in bringing COP30 to the Amazon was to focus the world's attention on a forest that both offers unique solutions to climate change, by locking away planet-warming carbon, and suffers some of its gravest consequences, in the form of wildfires and drought. While many climate change campaigners have celebrated that focus, some have also expressed fears that hosting such a major event may strain the fragile region and compromise the success of the conference. Belem, a port city of 1.3 million on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, is speckled with construction sites. The Brazilian government is pouring some $1 billion into new infrastructure. But much work remains to accommodate an expected 60,000-plus visitors.Two global advocacy groups who declined to be named told Reuters that scouts they hired had found accommodation prices for the November conference were several times higher than what they paid last year in Baku, Azerbaijan. Even the cheapest rooms are going for $400, and they are averaging around $1,500 a night.Lula shrugged off the hotel crunch in a recent visit to Belem, suggesting those who cannot find accommodation should sleep "looking at the sky – it will be wonderful."At the heart of the problem is a question that has become more acute as the annual COP has grown from a gathering of world leaders and diplomats to a sprawling conference mixing activists, businesses and government officials: Who is the U.N. climate summit really for? "It feels like a mundane thing, but it's actually politically very important," said Tasneem Essop, executive director of the Climate Action Network. "The ability to address the accommodation problems can make or break a COP."Civil society groups say their access is key to keeping pressure on negotiators, citing the role of public advocacy in breakthroughs such as the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund in 2022 to channel resources from wealthy nations to address destruction caused by climate change in poorer countries."Everybody's been waiting for the Brazil COP," Essop said. "For civil society, it is that point where once again we're going to be at the COP with space for our actions."FEW HOTELS, PLENTY OF CREATIVITY Brazil has already shifted the dates for heads of state to attend the summit to the week before the main event, trying to ease pressure on Belem's thin hotel supply. Two hotels are being built and two cruise ships for attendees will be docked in a nearby harbor.Entrepreneurs are hard at work figuring out other creative ways to accommodate the visitors. Businesses are looking to refurbish ferries with high-end suites. Developers plan to use idle land to put up refurbished shipping containers. Schools and churches have been earmarked to serve as hostels. Love motels that usually rent rooms by the hour are being advertised as options for full national delegations. Yorann Costa, the owner of Motel Secreto, said he can tone down the "more sensual mood" of his establishment by removing erotic chairs."But the poles, for example, I can't take out," he said, adding that the ceiling mirrors would also have to stay. Setting the right price was also tough, he said, because of the fierce speculation around what people were willing to pay. Valter Correia, Brazil's special secretary for COP30, said his office is planning to launch an official booking website within weeks to organize the market. He said his office is also looking for ways to discourage price gouging. Correia said the government expects around 45,000 people to attend COP and that the government has planned enough new accommodation to meet that demand.However, the People's Summit, a side-event run by activist groups, says it expects an additional 15,000. Organizers say they are planning to help with accommodation, for example by building campsites.City and state officials are also encouraging residents to travel and rent out their homes. That has unleashed a gold rush of sorts in Belem. Ads charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent apartments and houses for the month of COP have become common. Interviews with landlords, tenants and a building manager revealed dozens of cases of people who were refused renewal of their rental lease so landlords could prepare apartments for COP visitors paying ten times or more the usual rate. Rafaela Rodrigues, a businesswoman who says she was refused renewal of her rental, said she later found the apartment advertised for several times what she used to pay."It was chaos," she said. "I had 10 days to look for a new place, rent it, move and give back my other apartment."(Reporting by Manuela Andreoni in Belem and Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia; Editing by Brad Haynes and Rosalba O'Brien)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

Activism
Business
Forests

Suggested Viewing

The Story of a Forest

In 2004, a generation of activists arose in South Florida, carrying the passion of direct action groups like Earth First. and the deep analysis of the global justice movement that had swept the country in the preceding years. These activists sought local issues that exemplified the threats of corporate globalization. They stumbled upon a plan from biotech industry giants acting in collusion with the administration of then-Governor Jeb Bush to clear a vast swath of land in the Northeast Everglades of Florida to accommodate The Scripps Biotech Research Institute - And it was on. Over the next ten years, endless county zoning meetings were counter-balanced by dozens of civil disobedience arrests and a near-constant flow of news headlines about the battle: lawsuits, scandal, corruption, tree sits, endangered species, pranks, blockades, and a roller coaster of incremental victories followed by devastating losses for years on end. THE STORY OF A FOREST captures it all in a 1/2 hour documentary about the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition (PBCEC) and Everglades Earth First!'s (EEF!) ten-plus year campaign to stop the Scripps Biotech development, with a focus on protecting biodiversity in the Briger forest and the Florida wetlands.

Activism
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Wake Up People!

Environmental activists have been camping in Sodros for more than four months with the purpose of stopping the trees from being cut down. In the past few days Chinese company CRBC workers have been showing up at the site accompanied by the police and gendarmerie forces. The activists have been requesting to see the permits and the documentation for the work they are planning to conduct from the CRBC workers. The CRBC workers haven’t shown any of the permits. Also, the work has begun without a construction board being clearly visible, which is mandatory by law.

Sustainable
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Among Giants

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Forests
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Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist

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Activism
Culture
Documentary

The Whale Guitar: Instrument of Change

Inspired by Herman Melville's epic tale, "Moby-Dick or The Whale", a late-blooming singer/songwriter and former toy designer, Jen Long, acts on a startling vision and commissions the design and build of a remarkable custom electric guitar. It's body is "The Whale" itself as it snags the mad Captain Ahab in the tangled ropes of his own obsession, and prepares to launch a boat of his whalers to their doom. The entire guitar reinterprets Melville's tale as an Anthropocene climate change warning, with the whale representing the seas and storms of climate change arising on this "third day" of late stage capitalism. Hundreds of guitarists, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, have played and signed this "Instrument of Change" to amplify the alarm to turn our ship of over-production and over-consumption around while there is still time. As the embroidered strap featuring Starbuck's last words implores: "oh! Ahab, not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist."

Music
Activism
Climate

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